David Foster Wallace, "This is Water" Commencement Speech
Subject and Intention
The subject of this speech is to bring graduating students' attention to their negative "default" thoughts, and urge them to reform these patterns such that they automatically justify others' actions with compassion and optimism rather than cynicism. It is intended to promote others to look for the best in the world around them rather than resorting to world-hating thought patterns. Well said.
Genre and Context
The genre and context of this speech is a commencement speech that was given at a graduation in 2005 at Kenyon College by David Foster Wallace.
Persona and Tone
Persona: "Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you're "supposed to" think this way... because it's hard, it takes will and mental effort, and if you're like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat-out won't want to" (4). Wallace gives off an intelligent and relatable persona in which he attempts to explain the many ways of adjusting your thinking. He avoids alienating his audience by making his character less than perfect, showing them that he, too, has made mistakes and cannot always "adjust" his thinking patterns. Last point in particular is a good one; he manages to appeal to ethos by actually undercutting his own authority (probably a good idea given that his audience is a group of graduating college students-- not typically the sort to listen wide-eyed to Authority Figures).
Audience Appeals (Logos, Ethos, Pathos)
Logos: "The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning." - Wallace explains the importance of the story he previously told in this passage. There is no true emotional appeal in this passage, instead he appeals to the audience logically as university graduates by defining the story in terms of a more formalist approach.
Good. And, just so everyone knows: banal = devoid of freshness or originality; hackneyed; trite platitude (a term you should be familiar with for the exam) = A platitude is a trite, meaningless, biased, or prosaic statement, often presented as if it were significant and original. The word derives from plat, the French word for "flat." Whether any given statement is considered to have meaning is highly subjective, so platitude is often—but not always—used as a pejorative term to describe seemingly profound statements that a certain person views as unoriginal or shallow. An example of a platitude could be "go with the flow" or "The only thing to fear is fear itself."
Ethos The first example in which Wallace uses ethos to appeal to the reader is in his example of a day of routine life. "But then you remember [...] lady working the register" (2). The example really shows the regular workings of society and how everyone has to put on a mask in public. All of your emotions are pent up inside, yet you have to "grit your teeth and try to be polite as you ask them to let you by" (2).
Pathos Probably the most effective, in my opinion, appeal to the reader that Wallace uses in his entire essay. Wallace says that we can't "worship money and things" (4). He talks about evil, sin, worshiping material goods, etc. throughout the speech. The most interesting line, though, was when he talked about not wanting to shoot ourselves in the head. We have to find the good things in life, not pretend like everything is about us, and make a habit out of "being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day" (4). Basically, life is what you make out of it. So be happy.
Logos Pg 3- "Look, if I choose to think this way [...] to be a choice." This time, Wallace is using a more logical approach to his argument. He contends that we have to be reasonable with people, and not just get annoyed with them for "being in our way." Who knows what that person is going through right now? We can't think of ourselves as the center of the universe; and it follows logically that we aren't.
Rhetorical Devices used (figurative devices) (Oxymoron entry deleted. see above for definition of "banal platitude"; both words essentially mean the same thing.
ASYNDETON: "Probably the most dangerous thing about college education, at least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract arguments inside my head instead of simple paying attention to what's going on right in front of me" --pg1 (Not sure this if this is correct) [It's the omission of conjunctions between successive words, phrases, so on, the opposite of polysyndeton (I just did it there).] Typically it's several omissions in a row, so I would say this example falls a bit short of asyndeton. Good thought though.
POLYSYNDETON: "let's say it's an average day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging job, and you work hard for nine or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired, and you're stressed out, and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for a couple of hours and then hit the rack early"-- pg3
ASSONANCE: "to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone"--pg3
HYPERBOLE: "'Have a nice day' in a voice that is the absolute voice of death"-- pg3
ANAPHORA: "about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home"-- pg4
Metaphor: "This is water, this is water"-- pg5
Rhetorical Devices used (syntactical patterns)
PARENTHESIS: "other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real--you get the idea." pg1
APPOSITIVE: "many cliches, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth." pg 2 (Although an appositive uses this type of clause structure, an appositive uses a noun or pronoun to rename another noun or pronoun (ex. My favorite book, The Great Gatsby, is still a classic.). This is closer to parenthesis, where the phrase "so lame and unexciting on the surface" could be set off by dashes instead of those commas.
CLIMAX: "dead, unconcious, a slove to your head and to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely imperially alone, day in and day out." pg 2
PARALLELISM/POLYSYNDETON: "the really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and dicipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day." pg 2
ANTITHESIS: "everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have much harder, more tedious or painful lives than I do." pg 3
ANADIPLOSIS: "it is about simple awareness--awareness of what is so real and essential." pg 4
Good work on the rhetorical devices, both schemes and tropes.
Subject and Intention
The subject of this speech is to bring graduating students' attention to their negative "default" thoughts, and urge them to reform these patterns such that they automatically justify others' actions with compassion and optimism rather than cynicism. It is intended to promote others to look for the best in the world around them rather than resorting to world-hating thought patterns.
Well said.
Genre and Context
The genre and context of this speech is a commencement speech that was given at a graduation in 2005 at Kenyon College by David Foster Wallace.
Persona and Tone
Persona: "Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you're "supposed to" think this way... because it's hard, it takes will and mental effort, and if you're like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat-out won't want to" (4). Wallace gives off an intelligent and relatable persona in which he attempts to explain the many ways of adjusting your thinking. He avoids alienating his audience by making his character less than perfect, showing them that he, too, has made mistakes and cannot always "adjust" his thinking patterns.
Last point in particular is a good one; he manages to appeal to ethos by actually undercutting his own authority (probably a good idea given that his audience is a group of graduating college students-- not typically the sort to listen wide-eyed to Authority Figures).
Audience Appeals (Logos, Ethos, Pathos)
Logos: "The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance, or so I wish to suggest to you on this dry and lovely morning." - Wallace explains the importance of the story he previously told in this passage. There is no true emotional appeal in this passage, instead he appeals to the audience logically as university graduates by defining the story in terms of a more formalist approach.
Good. And, just so everyone knows:
banal = devoid of freshness or originality; hackneyed; trite
platitude (a term you should be familiar with for the exam) = A platitude is a trite, meaningless, biased, or prosaic statement, often presented as if it were significant and original. The word derives from plat, the French word for "flat." Whether any given statement is considered to have meaning is highly subjective, so platitude is often—but not always—used as a pejorative term to describe seemingly profound statements that a certain person views as unoriginal or shallow. An example of a platitude could be "go with the flow" or "The only thing to fear is fear itself."
Ethos
The first example in which Wallace uses ethos to appeal to the reader is in his example of a day of routine life. "But then you remember [...] lady working the register" (2). The example really shows the regular workings of society and how everyone has to put on a mask in public. All of your emotions are pent up inside, yet you have to "grit your teeth and try to be polite as you ask them to let you by" (2).
Pathos
Probably the most effective, in my opinion, appeal to the reader that Wallace uses in his entire essay. Wallace says that we can't "worship money and things" (4). He talks about evil, sin, worshiping material goods, etc. throughout the speech. The most interesting line, though, was when he talked about not wanting to shoot ourselves in the head. We have to find the good things in life, not pretend like everything is about us, and make a habit out of "being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day" (4). Basically, life is what you make out of it. So be happy.
Logos
Pg 3- "Look, if I choose to think this way [...] to be a choice." This time, Wallace is using a more logical approach to his argument. He contends that we have to be reasonable with people, and not just get annoyed with them for "being in our way." Who knows what that person is going through right now? We can't think of ourselves as the center of the universe; and it follows logically that we aren't.
Rhetorical Devices used (figurative devices)
(Oxymoron entry deleted. see above for definition of "banal platitude"; both words essentially mean the same thing.
ASYNDETON: "Probably the most dangerous thing about college education, at least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract arguments inside my head instead of simple paying attention to what's going on right in front of me" --pg1 (Not sure this if this is correct) [It's the omission of conjunctions between successive words, phrases, so on, the opposite of polysyndeton (I just did it there).] Typically it's several omissions in a row, so I would say this example falls a bit short of asyndeton. Good thought though.
POLYSYNDETON: "let's say it's an average day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging job, and you work hard for nine or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired, and you're stressed out, and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for a couple of hours and then hit the rack early"-- pg3
ASSONANCE: "to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone"--pg3
HYPERBOLE: "'Have a nice day' in a voice that is the absolute voice of death"-- pg3
ANAPHORA: "about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home"-- pg4
Metaphor: "This is water, this is water"-- pg5
Rhetorical Devices used (syntactical patterns)
PARENTHESIS: "other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real--you get the idea." pg1
APPOSITIVE: "many cliches, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth." pg 2 (Although an appositive uses this type of clause structure, an appositive uses a noun or pronoun to rename another noun or pronoun (ex. My favorite book, The Great Gatsby, is still a classic.). This is closer to parenthesis, where the phrase "so lame and unexciting on the surface" could be set off by dashes instead of those commas.
CLIMAX: "dead, unconcious, a slove to your head and to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely imperially alone, day in and day out." pg 2
PARALLELISM/POLYSYNDETON: "the really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and dicipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day." pg 2
ANTITHESIS: "everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have much harder, more tedious or painful lives than I do." pg 3
ANADIPLOSIS: "it is about simple awareness--awareness of what is so real and essential." pg 4
Good work on the rhetorical devices, both schemes and tropes.